Monday, January 4, 2016

Jacob Riis - How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis was an immigrant that came to America from Denmark in the middle of the 1800s at the age of 17.  In order to survive he had many jobs which included: ironworker, carpenter, bricklayer, and salesman.  He went to school and learned English and eventually he got a job as a police reporter with the New York Tribune...(newspaper). His job was to cover crime and that led to his becoming a Muckraker a person the exposed the evils of America.

Through his picture taking of crime in lower Manhattan Jacob Riis became aware of the poverty and hardships existed for immigrants in NYC.  Riis felt the best way to display these issues was to take pictures of the slums and tenements in Manhattan. " A picture is worth a thousand words." Riis taught himself photography and traveled lower Manhattan taking pictures.  He then created a picture book How the Other Half Lives. 

Once Americans saw these pictures they could no longer deny the harsh conditions in which immigrants lived in the largest city in America.  As a result this led to the Progressive Movement.

All groups are to use their graphic organizers to analyze pictures from Riis's book How the Other Half Lives.

Group # 1 - Choose 3 pictures and capture the details of each and record on the organizer.  Remember the organizer is double-sided - follow the directions on each side.

Picture # 1                           Picture # 2                         Picture # 3


Group # 2

Picture # 1                         Picture # 2                         Picture # 3


Group # 3

Picture # 1                         Picture # 2                         Picture # 3










 

No comments:

Post a Comment